If the Conservatives have anything to say about it, the coming election will be about trust. They’ll tell us Justin Trudeau is too callow to be trusted with power, that Tom Mulcair can’t be trusted not to sink the treasury by spending his way to a socialist utopia. And so on.

As campaign themes go, it’s a good one — or would be, were it not for the fact that inspiring ‘trust’ isn’t exactly Stephen Harper’s thing. A decade in power left a lot of bodies under the party bus. And now, one of Canada’s highest courts has signalled that it doesn’t really trust the prime minister either.

Suzanne Legault, Canada’s tenacious Information Commissioner, is launching a Charter of Rights challenge of the government’s budget law, C-59, because it includes a get-out-of-jail-free card for anyone who might have violated the Access to Information Act by destroying long gun registry data. This card can be used retroactively — to make illegal behaviour legal after the fact and to clear whatever obstacles remain to destroying the registry data.

The Federal Court had to decide whether to believe the government’s assurances that it would not destroy the data while Legault’s case proceeds. It chose discretion over faith — it signalled, effectively, that the Harper government’s solemn word of honour wasn’t going to be nearly good enough this time. Justice department lawyers tried to convince the court that there was no need for the government to produce a physical copy of the records because the Public Safety minister had made “four separate undertakings” to preserve them.

Legault wasn’t buying it. Her lawyer, Richard Dearden, cited a stack of affidavits, letters and email evidence showing that even as the Conservative government was promising the documents would be preserved in 2012, it was pursuing plans to destroy them outside of Quebec.

“I don’t like using the words, ‘can’t be trusted,'” said Dearden. “But as you heard me say in the court, I don’t take comfort in an assurance not to destroy records when there’s destruction plans ongoing at the same time — and in fact destruction did occur.”

Stephen Harper combines in his person some of the worst traits any politician can have: obstinacy, spite, wilful ignorance and a calculated indifference to reality.

On Monday, the court told the government to deliver the goods by 10 a.m. Tuesday so they could seal the information until all court challenges are dealt with. Most governments would at least acknowledge a judicial rebuke like that. The Harper Conservatives must be getting used to it by now.

The official government line is that the retroactive portion of Bill C-59 is about nothing more than closing a silly loophole, and that the RCMP did nothing wrong because it was acting on “the will of Parliament”.

Funny how these people take the “will of Parliament” seriously only when it suits them. In 2009, when the will of Parliament was to replace his government with a Liberal-NDP coalition, Harper went running to the Governor General with his tail between his legs. In 2011, when the will of Parliament held that Harper’s government should immediately turn over data on the cost of corporate tax cuts and crime bills, it refused — and was found in contempt of Parliament as a result.

Most people learn from mistakes. Stephen Harper seems to have learned just one lesson, and that one early on: winning is all, while rules are for the weak. We all knew kids like that on the playground growing up — the ones who would change the rules mid-game if they were losing, or burst into tears and run home. Most people outgrow that kind of stuff. Harper turned it into a career.

His government changed accelerated parole laws for first-time, non-violent federal offenders already in prison serving their sentences. The Supreme Court told him it was unconstitutional and out of bounds. Harper ignored them. When a Conservative MP introduced a private member’s bill to extend the time between parole hearings for violent offenders sentenced after the law’s passage, the government amended it to apply it retroactively so offenders already serving their sentences might have to wait five years for their next parole hearing — even though the law at the time they were sentenced set the period at two years.

Intelligent people can disagree on the merits of making offenders wait longer for a parole hearing — but changing the rules in the middle of someone’s sentence is a no-brainer. You can’t do it. It’s a violation of a bedrock principle of the justice system: you can’t be punished twice for the same crime.

So the law will be challenged and the government will lose. Again.

Stephen Harper combines in his person some of the worst traits any politician can have: obstinacy, spite, wilful ignorance and a calculated indifference to reality. His petulance and stubbornness is costing the taxpayer millions of dollars in unsuccessful legal defences of his crime bills.

But Parliament — notwithstanding the behaviour of its occupants — is not a sandbox. If Harper can’t learn to play by the rules, he can always take his ball and go home. Sooner, rather than later.

Steve Sullivan has been advocating for victims for almost 20 years, having served as the former president of the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime and as the first federal ombudsman for victims of crime. He has testified before numerous parliamentary committees on victims’ rights, justice reform and public safety issues and has conducted training for provincial and federal victim services. He is currently the executive director of Ottawa Victim Services and a part-time professor at Algonquin College. His views are his own and do not represent any agency with which he is associated.

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